I’ll bet you have probably read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have probably even read some of those articles all the way to the end, even clicked on some of the links in the article and read all the information on those links. And after finishing, you probably have thought to yourself, what a bunch of hooey… that won’t make money; I won’t promote that, I can’t do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL DESTROY MY IMAGE!
Well, that doesn’t have to happen. I’m going to give you some tips that will give you an opportunity to monetize your website or blog, while preserving your brand. One of the best and easiest ways to monetize your online properties is to join some affiliate programs and advertise them on your site.
Affiliate programs are the answer
Why affiliate programs? Simple. When you promote affiliate websites, you get instant access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials without and up-front development costs. All the work of writing an eBook, or recording an audio track, or programming a software product is taken care of by someone else. But the benefits don’t end there. Also, you don’t have to create marketing materials – those are created for you by the affiliate program owner.
Another big advantage is that you really don’t have to manually keep track of ROI or conversion rates. The best affiliate programs will probably provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the top affiliate management programs. The software programs will keep track of all kinds of metrics that will help you optimize your affiliate marketing effort.
Five tips for choosing affiliate offers to promote
- Look good earnings potential – You want to make sure that if one of the people you refer to an affiliate offer buys, that you will make some decent money. Many people think affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts are better overall. My preference is to look for opportunities where you can make a large commission from a sale. This affiliate program for promoting 30/60/90 day sales plan templates gives you the opportunity to earn almost $50 per sale.
- Choose programs your readers will like – It is critical that you choose affiliate programs and offers that your audience will appreciate and be interested in. It wouldn’t be smart to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for knitting and crochet products on a site that is dedicated to professional football. However, if you have a website that helps people find careers is sales, it would be great to promote something like How to Get Into Medical Sales.
- Look for affiliate programs powered by software – When you sign up for an affiliate program it will quickly become obvious if the owner of the program is serious about helping affiliate members be successful. If you are automatically redirected to a page in an affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If you get an email message that says ‘we’ll let you know if you earn anything’ you should think carefully about investing any time. Their are several top name brands like iDev Affiliate, LinkShare, and JROX JAM. My favorite is JROX JAM, which you can get for free here: http://websitesthatdrivesales.com/recommends/free-affiliate-management-software.htm
- Make sure the website is NOT anonymous – What I mean is, make sure that there are real people standing behind the website, people with good reputations, who take customer service seriously. People who tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They aren’t likely to try to avoid paying you the commissions that you have earned. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to research to find any negative information about their program. Peggy McKee, the Medical Sales Recruiter, is one of the country’s leading sales recruiters – she proudly announces her site ownership on the about pages like this one: http://30-60-90-day-sales-plan.com/about/
- Choose affiliate programs that have support programs – If you are choosing a piece of software to buy, you probably wouldn’t purchase it if there was not support mechanism in place. You should use the same criteria when evaluating affiliate programs. Affiliate website program owners that don’t put support systems in place – something like a ticket system or help desk software – probably won’t care about any their products or customers, and eventually they won’t are about you. If they do, then you can be rest assured that they are trying to delight their customers. If they AREN’T working to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your online brand.
There are a couple of affiliate programs that meet all these criteria, that I could recommend if your site’s visitors would be interested in these subjects. One is an affiliate program for a sales interview tool that targets sales professionals – you can check it out here: http://30-60-90-day-sales-plan.com/affiliate-program-details/. The other is a program that has a broader appeal – it targets people who own businesses that either have no web presence or under performing websites; you can get all the information for it here: http://websitesthatdrivesales.com/blog/home/affiliate-program/
Mail this post
Technorati Tags: affiliate marketers, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, affiliate software, internet business, internet marketing, make money from home, make money without working, making money online, monetize, Online Business, websites
Posted under Blogs
This post was written by Robjohn on June 10, 2009
Tags: affiliate marketers, affiliate marketing, affiliate programs, affiliate software, internet business, internet marketing, make money from home, make money without working, making money online, monetize, Online Business, websites